Archive for the 'Rattus' Category

It seems the Essen pre-hype began even earlier than usual this year with many, many new games being announced for release. It’s interesting to see how many new publishers there are this year too.

I shall be posting about forthcoming games that have caught my attention. As well as posting them, I have also added an Essen 2012 page where I will collate them as I go. Hopefully, I will get a chance to play them at Essen and then review them too.

Here’re the first few:

Bora Bora (Stefan Feld / Alea)
Stefan Feld always seems to find some interesting game mechanic to place at the heart of his games (Trajan, Luna and many others). In Bora Bora, players allocate dice to actions (the higher the number, the greater the effect of the action) and following players can use a previously used action but only with a lower value dice. So, a player could use an action with a low number and get little effect but would know following players would get even less out of that action. Sounds neat (and humorously mean).

Aztlan (Leo Colovini / Ares)
It’s funny how it can take some time to notice you like a specific game designer’s games. This game is designed by Leo Colovini so I checked what else he had done only to discover I have a lot of games by him and I like them too (Atlantis, Masons, Clans, Carolus Magnus). Aztlan sounds interesting too. From what I can tell, players secretly select a terrain type card (which determines where they get advantages) and then start placing meeple into regions for dominance (although can co-exist as well as fight) – players try to get control of areas whilst trying to figure out what terrain cards their opponents’ played so they know where they should pick their battles.
Check out more info on Ares’ site here: bga.me/aztlan

Rattus Cartus (Berg brothers / White Goblin)
I like the Berg brother’s games (Rattus and especially Oregon which is one of my favourite games) and the Rattus card game rules sound like it should be fun with some interesting mechanics that keep the theme and feel of Rattus but without directly duplicating it.
Check out more info on White Goblin site here: bga.me/rattuscartus

Balance of Power (Catalyst Game Labs)
Risk/Diplomacy looking game but using 3 types of unit that work in a rock/paper/scissors style. On a turn a player gets one action with each type of unit and actions are to move, attack or duplicate themself. Points are earned for controlling areas, capitals and your own country. Sounds simple yet tactical and without any luck. (This one just got released in the UK.)
Check out more info on the Catalyst site here: bga.me/balanceofpower

City of Horror (Asmodee)
I really liked Mall of Horror but it was broken as the person who controls the Security Room could hold it and win the game. However, City of Horror is a mjaor re-working of the original game and looks like it will be the game the original one should have been with lots of new game mechanics. Really looking forwards to this one.
Check out more info on the Asmodee site here: bga.me/cityofhorror

Call to Glory (Schacht / White Goblin)
Nice, simple card game. Some push-your-luck element as you lay down sets of matching cards to get points but can’t add to them once they’re down and an opponent can take those points if they can lay down more cards of that type. Players draw from the two draw decks or the two discard decks.
Check out more info on the White Goblin site here: bga.me/ctglory

I just saw the new games that White Goblin Games will be releasing at Essen in Germany in October. These are looking really good. They’ve also just started taking pre-orders too.

Lost Temple

A game based on the excellent Citadels but this time it’s a race game to be the first one to the temple to plunder its treasures.

In Citadels, players select a role/character from a fixed set and pass the rest to the next player to make their choice. Figuring out which role each player has probably selected is a big part of the game as some characters foil others and no-one knows who picked which character until everyone has chosen for that round. Not sure how much of this is in Lost Temple but it sounds very interesting as Citadels is a classic.

Plays 2-8 players too.

Panic Station

This game really interests me as it’s like the movie The Thing with a single player who has been taken over by an alien amongst lots of uninfected players; however, the infection can spread so the infected players start to increase. Each player controls an android and a human trying to stop the evil aliens – well, unless they;re already evil aliens.

The reason this interests me so much is that I actually have game design notes going back some years with the exact same premise, so I’m very interested to see how this game compares.

Rattus is by the same designers who created Oregon, one of my favourite board games. For me, Oregon has a great mix of strategy and planning without being heavy – plenty to think about, a good amount of control, but relatively light so most people can enjoy it. So, I was really pleased when I heard they had created a new game.

Rattus is themed around the Black Death, the plague that wiped out 1/3 of the European population from 1348-1350. In essence, players take turns placing their population (coloured cubes) onto the European map and, as you may expect, population pieces get removed as the plague sweeps from area to area. The winner is the player with the most population left at the end of the game. Read the rest of this entry »